Britt Jones
Last night’s football heroics were apparently aided by a water bottle cheat sheet.
I know you can’t do that in your GCSE’s, but footy? That might be another story.
According to some eagle-eyed viewers and media, England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford’s penalty savers last night (6 July) were aided by his drink, and fans find it hilarious.
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England’s number 1 went up against Switzerland’s defender Manuel Akanji as the team went on to seal the deal on 5-3 win on penalties, after initially drawing 1-1 in the 120 minutes of the quarter-final of Euro 2024.
After he failed to keep out Xherdan Shaqiri, choosing to dive the right way for two out of four, some may have thought he was just lucky.
But nope, he was aided by a very strange object.
No A4 sheet of paper was going to tell this man how to play…it was his plastic water bottle instead which provided instructions for every Switzerland player.
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Within the instructions, you can see Akanji's name, where Pickford had written ‘dive left’.
Do you remember how he dived on the first penalty which ended up giving the Three Lions the win? He dove left.
Now, the team are going to the semi-finals to play against the Netherlands on Wednesday (10 July) and it’s going to be tense.
Let’s hope he’s got another water bottle hiding somewhere...
But we could have been better off during the match if Pickford had read his bottle and used the information he was given as he was supposed to pretend to dive right and then go left, and muddled it up instead with Fabian Schar.
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Even though most of the instructions were correct, it was Switzerland's Zeki Amdouni who didn’t do what he was predicted to do.
The bottle had Pickford diving left, when the Swiss sent it down the middle.
Who’s writing those instructions? Jeez.
Instagram users were loving the bottle online, with many heading to the comments to make jokes about his cheat sheet.
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One user wrote: “The bottle performed better than most of the players in this match," as another said: “But when I did this for my GCSEs they took my water bottle away.”
This comes after England fans had a theory that Jude Bellingham 'knew he wasn't going to be subbed off'.
Last night’s quarter-final match saw Gareth Southgate make his first changes.
When the boss decided to bring on some subs for the Three Lions, as the numbers flicked up on the fourth official's board, there was some confusion in the 78th minute because of how he decidedly went against the board.
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At the time, Kobbie Mainoo, Kieran Trippier and Ezri Konsa were all heading off to be replaced by Eberechi Eze, Luke Shaw and Cole Palmer, but the substitution board showed Bellingham's number, 10 - who seemed certain that he wasn't going anywhere.
Carl Anka of The Athletic suggested on X that it's down to the way Southgate uses substitutions, and speculated that he pre-plans his changes way before kick-off, rather than reacting to the live play.